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Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US?
BDPrime writes, "A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE (PDF). The story quotes David Douglas, one of Sun's eco-evangelists, reflecting on the alternative: 'If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'" It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste."
This is the second time that I've noticed kdawson misusing the Enlightenment icon. Are you guys just picking icons based on how pretty they look now?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
You must be kidding. When did you ever see a car in the landfill. They go to junkyards, which after salvaging what they can in parts, they are smashed and then taken to be recycled. Not sure about appliances, but every time I have had a new one delivered, they have taken the old one away with them. As much as most metal prices are now, if you throw something that has much metal in it away someone is likely to take it out of your trash and to the scrap yard.
That's different, I think in a subtle but significant way. The law says that oil must be disposed of properly. That's not at all the same as saying that (say) Penzoil is responsible for all the oil they sell.
Whether you're getting your oil changed at the same garage you bought it or a different one, the law applies to whoever is disposing of oil. If you changed it yourself, then you would have to dispose of it properly.
I'd say this is a much better law than one that makes producers responsible for their product after they've sold them.
Because we're not running out of landfill space, nor the materials that go into automobiles and appliances?
Because recycling, when it's stupid, is STILL STUPID.
Because forcing stupid recycling on people is, well, stupid?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You joke, but much of the lead in bullets used recreationally is sold as scrap and reused.
.45 ACP brass around a range and see how long it lasts -- not long.
I used to clean out the bullet trap in the back of the range I used to go to (and without any sort of safety gear -- OSHA would have a field day with that) and it got sold to a local guy who used to melt and cast new bullets out of it. You just put it in a crucible and heat it, and most of the other metals (mostly copper, from jacketed bullets) either floats or sinks, and you get your lead back. There are all sorts of "recipes" on how much virgin lead/antimony/rose-petals/etc. you need to add back in, to get good quality bullet casting material.
Not sure what the industry is like now, but you used to be able to go to the backs of most of the shooting rags (e.g. Shotgun News) and find people selling blocks of recycled lead that they had obtained by melting down stuff like this. Wheel weights were also a source of raw material, although I've heard that they're considered very "dirty."
The brass cartridge cases have an even more direct recycling path -- most of them (centerfire ones, anyway) are just reused. Leave a bag of spent
The point here is that stuff gets recycled without any deposits or laws, because it's economically advantageous to do so. Reusing bullet lead and brass cartridge cases makes for cheaper ammunition than buying new stuff, and that means that the scrap has a fairly high residual value. It also helps that the remanufacturing necessary to make usable product out of either is fairly simple and low-tech (you can do both in your basement or garage).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just exactly who decides what is toxic, and how much is meaningful anyway? For example, car batteries dump way more lead into the ecosystem than lead from electrical solder, and the alternatives to lead solder that are in use in Europe are shown to have reliability problems. If your PC has a shorter life due to use on non-lead solder do you really reduce the environmental impact?
Ditto mercury - for example mercury is used in compact flourescent lamps - but using these lamps actually leads to less mercury in the environment because the energy saved reduces coal buring which is the primary source of mercury in the environment. And LEDs are far less efficient than flourescent so their use doesn't reduce electrical consumption as much.
And what about the environmental impact of waste from recycling? It may turn out this is more harmful than the relatively stable computer in the leandfill.
I spent some time studying paper recycling and paper life cycles, and it sure looked to me like for most types of paper the overall impact of just throwing it away was less than trying to recycle paper. Collection costs, transportation, reprocessing (and waste from reprocessing/chemical use in reprocessing) etc. didn't present a very pretty picture.
Passing the cost of recycling in that case to the consumer is ass backwards.
The idea is to make manufacturers more responsible about not only the type of materials used, but also how easy it is to recycle them at the end of their useful life.
In Germany, the manufacturers are responsible for all the packaging that their products come delivered in. Under your rules, they could use massive boxes and fill them with any old shit, chemical waste, and broken glass. Under the German rules, they (the manufacturers) realised it was in their own best interest to use as little packaging as possible. That also happens to be in the environments best interests. Now apply the same principle to the design of refrigerators, TVs and other electrical goods. If the manufacturer knows that come the end, they will have to re-use or responsibly dispose of their old products, they are going to make damn sure that it costs them at little as possible.
The ironic thing is, as much as the manufacturers whine now, when they actually start getting with the program, their costs actually go down !
But DAWEOO also have to cost the product to the end-of-life disposal if they want to sell it in the US. Hence the brands are all on an equal footing.
The best bet to stop outsorcing to China, is to introduce import taxes on the basis of how much CO2 is produced in the manufacture of the product. If we take Japan as the benchmark, we use about 5 times as much energy here in the EU, for the USA it is about 8 times and for China it is a staggering 11 times. Save the enviroment and stop manufacturing being outsourced. It should pass the WTO as it is non discrimitory. There is nothing stopping China becoming more energy efficient.